“The dirty little secret of genomics is that we still know next to nothing about how a genome translates into the particularities of a living and breathing individual. If”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“I knew that no one had spent as much time and effort on this sort of work as we had, but we eventually settled on the laboratory of Mark Stoneking, a population geneticist at Penn State University.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“In the 50,000 years that followed—a time four to eight times shorter than the entire length of time the Neanderthals existed—the replacement crowd not only settled on almost every habitable speck of land on the planet, they developed technology that allowed them to go to the moon and beyond.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Science is far from the objective and impartial search for incontrovertible truths that nonscientists might imagine. It is, in fact, a social endeavor where dominating personalities and disciples of often defunct yet influential scholars determine what is “common knowledge.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“compulsion to direct the attention of others is one of the first cognitive traits that emerge during childhood development that is truly unique to humans.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“According to the fossil record, Neanderthals appeared between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago and existed until about 30,000 years ago. Throughout their entire existence their technology did not change much.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“The dirty little secret of genomics is that we still know next to nothing about how a genome translates into the particularities of a living and breathing individual.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Es fácil imaginar que la enorme capacidad humana para las actividades sociales, para manipular a los demás, para la política, y para la acción concertada del tipo que da como resultado grandes y complejas sociedades, surge de esta habilidad para ponerse en el lugar del otro y manipular la atención y el interés de esa otra persona.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Así que está claro que hay un sustrato biológico necesario para adquirir con plenitud la cultura humana.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Sin embargo, los simios, aunque se integren en la sociedad humana a muy temprana edad y con mucha intensidad, y aunque se les haya sometido a procesos de enseñanza, no desarrollan más que habilidades culturales rudimentarias. Solo un entrenamiento social no es suficiente. Es necesaria una predisposición genética para adquirir la cultura humana”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Según los registros fósiles, los neandertales aparecieron entre hace 300.000 y 400.000 años y existieron hasta hace unos 30.000 años.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“If I sequenced my own genome and showed it to a geneticist, she would be able to say approximately where on the planet I or my ancestors came from by matching variants in my genome with the geographic patterns of variants across the globe. She would not, however, be able to tell whether I was smart or dumb, tall or short, or almost anything else that matters with respect to how I function as a human being. Indeed, despite the fact that most efforts to understand the genome have sprung from efforts to combat disease, for the vast majority of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, or heart disease, our current understanding allows us only to assign vague probabilities to the likelihood that an individual will develop them.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Matthias and I met up again in the lab after Christmas vacations and sat down to write our paper. One major question was where to send it. Nature, the British journal, and its American counterpart Science, enjoy the most prestige and visibility in the scientific community and in the general media, and either would have been an obvious choice. But they both impose strict length limits on manuscripts, and I wanted to explain all the details of what we had done—not only to convince the world that we had the real thing but also to promote our painstaking methods of extracting and analyzing ancient DNA. In addition, I had become disenchanted with both journals because of their tendency to publish flashy ancient DNA results that did not meet the scientific criteria our group considered necessary. They often seemed more interested in publishing papers that would give them coverage in the New York Times and other major media outlets than in making sure the results were sound and likely to hold up.”
― quote from Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
“Our faith in victory had been unquestioning, its opposite, defeat, had no currency among us. Victory was possible, that was all. It would be easy or difficult, quick or prolonged, but it would be victory. So here came the disturbing Hoosier, displaying the other side of the coin, showing us defeat. It shook us. And it was from this moment that we dated the feeling of what is called expendability. All armies have expendable items, that is, a part or unit the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole. In some ordeals, a man might consider his finger expendable, but not his hand, or in extremity his arm but not his heart. There are expendable items which may be lost or destroyed in the field either in peace or in war without their owner being required to replace them. A rifle is so expendable or a cartridge belt. So are men. Men are the most expendable of all. Hunger, the jungle, the Japanese, not one nor all of these could be quite as corrosive as the feeling of expendability. This was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt, that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice, that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being expended puts one in the roll of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach yet, for the same master he would have gone gladly to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifices of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one victim. If we were to be victims, we were as firmly secured to our role as Isaac bound to the faggots. No day passed without extenuating it.”
― Robert Leckie, quote from Helmet for My Pillow
“Never underestimate the power of glitter.”
― Katie Klein, quote from Cross My Heart
“All he had to do was love her, and he could do that. -Kingsley”
― Melissa de la Cruz, quote from Keys to the Repository
“You just don’t know what’s really going on in a marriage unless it’s yours.”
― Kaira Rouda, quote from Here, Home, Hope
“He hated to be alone, but people bored him. Being alone was like being tired, but unable to sleep.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Murder of Quality
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